A number of years ago, I got it into my head that it’d be cool to use a screenshot of a Solitaire game as my work computer’s wallpaper.

I started a game, moved the cards around a bit, saved a screenshot of the game, and then made that screenshot the wallpaper on the computer’s desktop. Easy-peasy.

I thought that it was pretty obvious that it was a picture of a game, rather than a real game, but I’m getting used to being wrong.

After the Solitaire wallpaper had been in place for about a year, one of the Help Desk folks needed to work on my computer and then reboot it. He was trying to close the Solitaire game by clicking on the ‘X’ in the top right corner of what appeared to be the game’s window.

I pointed out that he was clicking on the desktop’s wallpaper and that there wasn’t a game running. He didn’t believe me.

I then walked him thru the process of verifying that there was no game running and that he could safely reboot my computer. (Not that a running Solitaire game is a reason to not reboot a computer. That’s another story.)

I mentioned this later to another coworker. He was surprised. He just thought that I really liked playing Solitaire.

Apparently, anyone who’d seen my work computer that year had assumed that I was a big fan of Solitaire.

Which is nuts. Anyone who knew me back then would’ve known that I was a minesweeper guy.